


Swimming in this Strange Sea

by roseandheather



Category: Honor Harrington Series - David Weber
Genre: And more sex, Did I mention the sex?, F/F, Graphic Sex, Just Sex, Porn, and flirting, nothing but sex, technological singularity of lesbian geek love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 19:46:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2704325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseandheather/pseuds/roseandheather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sonja Hemphill did not usually find herself stunned into near-total ineloquence, but as she stood in the observation dome of RHNS <i>Temeraire</i>, with the full glory of Bolthole's shipyards before her, she found herself absolutely at a loss for words."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swimming in this Strange Sea

**Author's Note:**

> I. Uh. I have no excuse for this. None. It's been lurking in my hard drive for over a year, and it's pretty much complete as it stands, so. Here you go. My characterisation might be off - but I plead artistic license given that we've never seen either Shannon or Sonja in love before.
> 
> Insofar as have a femmeslash OTP in science fiction, this is it.
> 
> So. Uh. Sex. (And hopefully more than a little heartwarming to go along with it.)

“Oh. My. _God_.”

Sonja Hemphill did not usually find herself stunned into near-total ineloquence, but as she stood in the observation dome of RHNS _Temeraire_ , with the full glory of Bolthole’s shipyards before her, she found herself absolutely at a loss for words.

A shimmering laugh echoed beside her, and she turned to face Shannon Foraker, whose eyes were twinkling madly. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”

The Havenite admiral surveyed her domain with undisguised pride, and Sonja fully understood why. Dear God, if her R&D teams had had something like _this_ to play with…

Wonderingly, Sonja shook her head. “So this is where you worked your magic.”

“Magic!” Shannon barely kept herself from snorting. “It was all we could do just to keep in shouting range of you and your gorgeous toys!”

“But you shouldn’t have been able to.” Suddenly serious, Sonja turned and studied her Havenite counterpart intensely. “No one should have been able to, not people who weren’t starting with what we did! Most of my ‘toys’ wouldn’t have been possible without Grayson, and you didn’t have access to _any_ of that, but you were able to combat it anyway. Shannon, what you’ve done here -”

She looked again into those dazzling, brilliant eyes, and thought again about the technological miracles Shannon Foraker had worked against what should have been an insurmountable disadvantage.

Then she thought about the prospect of working _with_ that brilliant mind to expand, to combine, to create a technological edge that would far surpass what either of them could have come up with alone, and something hot and dizzy spiraled through her, leaving her cheeks flushed and damp and her head spinning with possibility, with want, with… desire?

She knew, in a single stunning instant, that ‘desire’ was _exactly_ the word for what she was feeling, and it shocked her almost as much as it thrilled her.

_Shannon Foraker._

“What you’ve done here is a miracle,” Sonja finished, when she got her brain in working order again, and she was surprised at how rough her voice sounded. “I think you and I are going to find a few more up our sleeves, together. And I can hardly wait.”

Bright blue eyes looked back at her, clear and burning with only one purpose - to make whoever had turned Manticore and Haven against each other pay, and pay in spades. Sonja knew the same purpose burned in her own, and once again the stunning shock of being allowed to work with _this_ woman, and not _against_ her, swamped her mind and heated her blood.

Limitless horizons stretched in front of them, an infinite edge of technological superiority to be refined and expanded to the limits of the universe and beyond.

_Elizabeth and Eloise. Harrington, Theisman, Alexander, and Tourville. Terekhov and Henke and Oversteegen and Bellefeuille. Shannon and me, together. And Grayson, standing with all of us._

_God, those bastards don’t stand a chance._

Suspended in a haze of heady, thrilling want, she held out a hand.

Shannon took it, and held tight.

And somewhere far distant, the universe trembled.

~*~

“Admiral Foraker to see you, ma’am!”

“Thank you, Bernadette.” Sonja smiled at her Havenite aide, but didn’t bother so much as getting off her bed, despite the slip of a nightgown she wore. She and Shannon were far past that kind of formality.

She did, however, wriggle closer to the center, leaving enough room for Shannon to look over her shoulder. “Shanna! What have you got?”

Shannon didn’t hesitate, running through the door and throwing herself down next to Sonja, the thin, silky tank top and capris concealing very little, and at any other time Sonja would have sat up and taken notice. “Look at this,” Shannon said excitedly, her finger circling something on her data pad. “I was running a couple of computer sims, and if you look right here…”

Sonja studied the diagram Shannon had circled and frowned for a moment, then gasped. “Shanna, you’re a genius. But what if we tweaked this -” she circled another part of the diagram, then sketched in a rough outline of what she wanted, and Shannon’s eyes lit up.

“Oh, perfect! And if we do this -” she added a few rapid keystrokes, “and add in that -”

“ -then we can do this and this, and maybe even this?”

“Yes! And if we tweak that, and change this just a little, then -”

They looked at each other.

“Do you think, Admiral Foraker,” said Sonja, “that the labs might be open and empty at this hour?”

“I think, Admiral Hemphill, that there’s a very good chance of that,” agreed Shannon gravely.

They grinned in unison.

“Come on!” cried Sonja, grabbing Shannon’s hand and throwing a silky kimono over her pajamas with the other. They raced hand-in-hand down the hall, skidded around the turn and let the door slam shut behind them.

“Okay,” panted Shannon, as her fingers began to fly, inputting data almost too quickly for even Sonja to follow. She bent, double-checked a couple of numbers, and hit the button that would run the sim, then grabbed Sonja’s hand again and held it tight as they watched eagerly.

For five minutes, they barely breathed, palms beginning to sweat.

The sim beeped encouragingly at them.

They stared at the results for perhaps thirty seconds.

Then Sonja let out a war whoop and launched herself into Shannon’s arms, flinging her arms about the other woman’s neck as Shannon spun her in circles in pure glee.

“Yes!” For a brief moment Shannon was an Academy student again, triumphing over the laws of physics, and she forgot where she was and what she (wasn’t) wearing as she whirled Sonja about in ecstatic joy.

And then Sonja slipped slowly to the floor, only the thinnest of silky, clingy fabric separating the skin of her waist from Shannon’s hands between her kimono and her slip, and they both stopped breathing again. Caught in a rush of feeling she didn’t quite understand, her hands tightened on Sonja’s waist, and time seemed to slow.

“Soni?” The voice was hesitant, questioning.

“Yeah? Yeah, Shanna?” Sonja’s voice was just as soft, just as breathless, and her hands were unknowingly playing with the loose hair at the nape of Shannon’s neck.

“Sonja, I don’t - I don’t know what -”

“It’s okay.” Chest heaving, Sonja rested her forehead briefly against Shannon’s shoulder. “Whatever it is, it’s okay. I’m feeling it, too.” Caught in a feedback loop of ecstasy and desire and the thrill of a major breakthrough, Sonja felt her knees start to wobble, and clutched at Shannon’s shoulders to stay upright.

When she could lift her head again Shannon was studying her intently, and one hand lifted from her waist to tuck a wayward strand of hair behind Sonja’s ear.

“Please,” managed Shannon at last, and all Sonja could do was nod once, choppily.

“Yes,” she breathed, and before she could say it again Shannon’s mouth was on hers and everything else vanished as the world caught fire.

The kiss spun out for endless minutes, skin heating and flushing as hands wandered. Sonja found herself trapping Shannon’s thigh between her own and gasping into the pressure, her knees really on the verge of giving out now, and then the satin covering her own thigh went slick and damp and Sonja moaned aloud as Shannon clutched her closer.

“ _God_.” The word exploded out of her. “ _God_ , Shanna.” Her now-damp nightgown tangled and clung around her thighs, restricting her movement and making her want to scream in frustration, and so Sonja gasped in relief when Shannon lifted her easily to sit on the counter, stepping between her legs. The movement hiked the skirt clear to her hips, and she wrapped her legs around Shannon’s waist and clung as they kissed again, her hand hiking the thin, silky tank higher and finally finding the glory of bare skin.

The whimper that escaped Sonja’s voice when Shannon tore her mouth away shouldn’t have been human, but Shannon buried her face against Sonja’s shoulder and began to shake, and then Sonja didn’t have time for anything but the trembling woman in her arms.

“What is it, Shanna?” Oh, her voice was rough with want, but that was okay, that was fine, that was…

“I don’t know what this is,” Shannon said at last. “I don’t know how to…”

“Shannon,” said Sonja gently, and tilted her chin so Shannon was forced to meet her eyes. “What this is, dear heart, is that I want you, and you want me. That’s all there has to be. All this ever has to be is what we want it to be.”

Shannon stared at her for a long minute, and her eyes were very blue. “Every time I got a report on what your new systems could do,” she said at last, “it felt like a love letter just to me.” She took a deep breath, and Sonja drew her closer. “And now here we are and I am so scared that I’ll wake up and it’ll all be just a dream and I’ll have to keep sending out ships to shoot at you, and get shot at by you, and I don’t want to, I never wanted to, I just wanted -”

“Shhh,” murmured Sonja, and kissed her, long and slow and sweet, and not heated at all. “Come here, baby. It’s over, all right? Eloise and Elizabeth sorted it all, there’s not going to be any more shooting at each other, and you and me, we are going to finish the bastards who started it, okay? We’re all going to finish it, you and me and Tom and Honor and Lester. It’s all over, Shannon. And I promise you, baby, I promise you this isn’t a dream.”

“I don’t know how to do this,” Shannon mumbled into Sonja’s shoulder, but her trembles had eased.

Sonja stroked her long blonde hair, hands running over her back and shoulders. “You said that before,” she noted quietly. “Don’t know how to do what, Shanna?”

Shannon lifted her head and met Sonja’s eyes. “Fall in love.”

“Are you? In love, I mean?” Sonja asked gently, trying not to shake herself, one hand cupping Shannon’s cheek.

Slowly, tentatively, Shannon shook her head.

“Do you think you could be, soon?” Sonja asked softly, her voice, impossibly, even more gentle.

With wide eyes, very slowly, Shannon nodded, and Sonja wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. “It’s not just you,” she swore, half sobbing. “Shannon, baby, I _promise_ it’s not just you.”

That’s when Shannon kissed her again, and all Sonja’s careful composure and determination to be the strong one, the port in Shannon’s storm, went out the window in a blaze of want.

“Wait,” Sonja found the self-control to gasp some minutes later, when Shannon’s hand had found its way under her nightgown to cup bare skin, and Shannon looked up at her, eyes wide and frightened as a near-deer in headlights. “Baby,” she begged, kissing Shannon’s cheek even as she avoided her mouth, because that was a distraction she did not need right now, “baby, someday I swear to God I will make love with you here in the lab but tonight I think we need a proper bed.”

Shannon looked up at her through long, honey-colored lashes, intertwining her fingers with Sonja’s and bringing their joined hands to her lips to kiss them over and over again, and Sonja tilted her head back and struggled to breathe as pleasure wiped all thought from her mind.

“You were saying?” Shannon asked her wickedly some few minutes later, as Sonja’s breath caught hard in her chest.

“Damn it, baby,” she gasped, and took Shannon’s mouth with hers in a long hot kiss that left her head reeling. “Shanna, sweetheart, if I don’t get you to an actual bed so I can touch you fucking properly I think I will explode.”

“Well, when you put it that way,” breathed Shannon, the heat of her breath dancing over Sonja’s collarbones, and Sonja actually whimpered as she lowered herself to the floor, the ache in her core deepening as she ground herself slick and wet against Shannon’s thigh, her arms still looped around Shannon’s neck - partly to hold herself upright, and partly, she admitted to herself, because even now she couldn’t quite bear to let go.

They fumbled themselves out of the lab in a rush of hot words and quickening breath, and when Shannon tumbled onto her bed, her face flushed, hair spread in a halo and satin damp and clinging to every part of her body, Sonja let out an involuntary whine and kissed her until they were both breathless.

“God, the way you look at me,” Shannon breathed against Sonja’s cheek, and Sonja chuckled, wet and just a little overcome.

“The way I look at you,” she agreed quietly, her hands roaming restlessly. “You’re… I don’t have the words for what you are, sweetheart.”

“I’ve never been beautiful,” Shannon admitted shyly, and Sonja pulled up short, studying the heartbreakingly lovely woman in her arms.

“No,” she agreed at last, and it was true; Shannon Foraker would never be a conventional beauty. But her smile and her spirit lit her face with a glow all her own, and Sonja felt herself melt, her heart surrendering as her body already had.

_If I am not already in love with this woman_ , she thought to herself as the glory of it spilled through her like liquid light, _I am going to be - and very, very soon._

“No,” she whispered again, and stroked Shannon’s cheek with a tenderness she hadn’t known she possessed. “What you are is extraordinary.”

When the tears spilled from Shannon’s eyes Sonja bent to kiss them away, her lips brushing over cheeks and eyes and mouth, and Shannon arched into her with a desperate moan and suddenly slow was impossible.

“Let me touch you,” Sonja begged, half out of her mind with desire. “Baby, please, let me touch you…”

“Anywhere,” Shannon gasped, and Sonja closed her eyes against a rush of lust.

“Don’t say that,” she got out through gritted teeth, her hand drifting down to rest carefully on Shannon’s thigh. “Baby, don’t you dare say that unless you mean it.”

Quite deliberately Shannon covered Sonja’s hand with hers, slid it just a few inches over until Sonja’s fingers brushed hot, damp satin.

“Anywhere,” Shannon repeated, her voice suddenly an octave lower, and Sonja’s breath clogged in her lungs as her fingers curled automatically against that slick damp heat. Shannon arched into her fingers with a throaty moan, her hips bucking off the bed, and Sonja bit her lip and fought for sanity.

“I want to unwrap you,” she murmured huskily, hardly aware of where the words were coming from. “I want to take you apart, Shanna my love. I want to make you forget everyone and everything but me. And I want to see your face when you come apart under my hands.”

Shannon whined - in nerves or pleasure, Sonja didn’t know. She curled one hand around Shannon’s, intertwining their fingers, giving her an anchor, and Shannon gripped it tight, fretting against the hand still pressing against her centre and begging for more. “Soni,” she gasped, the words more breath than anything, “Soni, I can’t…”

“Shhhh.” Sonja let her fingers tease, rubbing and circling, listened to Shannon gasp and tried not to cry. “Yes you can, baby, just let go…”

“Oh my God,” Shannon gasped at last, and clamped Sonja’s hand in hers as she shuddered and went weak.

“Oh, Shanna.” Gently Sonja brushed her lips over Shannon’s forehead, fought back the desire that swamped her and felt her breath stutter when Shannon canted her hips in a wordless plea.

“Your heart’s racing,” Shannon murmured in wonderment, her free hand settling over the rapid thud of Sonja’s heartbeat. “It’s like it’s jumped into the theta bands, God, Soni…”

“That’s what you do to me,” managed Sonja, trapped in the ricochet of pleasure between the press of Shannon’s thigh between her legs and the gentle touch over her heart. “Good God, Shanna, you can’t even imagine…”

“I beg to differ,” Shannon said from somewhere in the back of her throat, and then her thumb was swiping over clingy silk and the pert peak of a nipple and Sonja lost the ability to breathe entirely. “You made one mistake,” Shannon continued huskily, her voice sodden with wanting. “And that was assuming that tonight was all about me.” One lithe, satin-covered leg curled around Sonja’s waist and held, leaving her nowhere to go even as she tried to writhe in desire, and Sonja let out a soft, needy cry, wondering distantly how the tables had been so abruptly turned without her even being aware of it.

She defied Cordelia Ransom and survived, Sonja remembered, and lost her breath entirely. Well, I’ll never underestimate her again…

The yelp that escaped her came entirely unannounced as Shannon flipped them, and Sonja lost her breath as her back collided with the mattress. Bucking against the hand that curled deep into her heat, she felt something deep inside coiling tight only to hover on the edge of cataclysm, and then she came in a sudden hot gush against Shannon’s fingers, soaking her thighs and the bedsheets below as the orgasm caught her completely unawares and left her bucking her hips helplessly into Shannon’s touch.

“Oh my _God_.” Shannon’s hand flexed involuntarily, and Sonja trembled helplessly as those slim, capable fingers plunged even more deeply inside her. “Oh my God, Soni, _look_ at you - you’re so wet, baby, just look at you, you’re so gorgeous when you come, I can’t - “

Sonja cried out as the second orgasm caught her hard on the heels of the first, and she went limp, sobbing out in an agony of bliss.

“Oh, dear God,” whispered Shannon, and then Shannon’s mouth was on hers and she clung to the kiss, the tears flowing down her cheeks as she curled one weak hand into Shannon’s hair and held on.

Defenseless, broken open, entirely exposed despite the silk that still clung to her body, Sonja let the third orgasm take her without a fight.

She came to again when cool air swirled around damp, sticky thighs as soft lips brushed her skin, and Sonja twitched, her eyes fluttering open -

\- only to see Shannon, kneeling between her legs, kissing the exposed skin with a look of such raw, tender reverence that all the sleepy mists clouding her mind evaporated in an instant.

“Shanna,” she gasped, and dragged Shannon up to kiss her, hot and desperate.

Her arms tangled in the fabric of her nightie and, frustrated, she pulled it over her head and tossed it away, barely hearing Shannon’s dazed moan of delight. Naked seemed like the best idea in the world - why hadn’t they done this sooner?? - and Shannon followed, tank and then capris landing somewhere near Sonja’s nightie.

Finally skin to skin they collided, the kiss frantic and hungry, landing haphazardly in a pile of pillows. Heat flared and Sonja suddenly found herself desperate, not for herself this time but to watch Shannon shatter; she pinned the other woman’s hands above her head in one smooth motion, years of Academy training coming back in an instant, and Shannon stared up at her, eyes wide and so very blue.

Shakily, desperately, Shannon nodded.

And Sonja took her apart.

The thin, shimmery tank came off in no time at all. Spellbound, Sonja found herself breathlessly tracing the swells and hollows of bare skin, hands cupping breasts and leaving Shannon gasping for air as thumbs stroked and nipples tightened. Her body arched, hips coming off the bed, and Sonja was not a brilliant tactician for nothing; she used the opportunity shamelessly to strip the capris off and away, and Shannon whined as Sonja bent to feather her lips and lashes over the curve of her hipbone and dip of her waist before she nuzzled the inside of a silky thigh and stopped holding back.

At the first taste, Shannon moaned. By the third, she was screaming. Her hands clutched at the bedclothes, completely lost to the world around her, as her hips arched and arched again into the touch of the soft, wet tongue swirling delicately around swollen heated flesh. Her first orgasm had been barely a spark compared to this inferno; now Sonja’s hands teased all the skin she could reach, lighting fires that left her incoherent.

Her legs parted further, a desperate plea if Sonja had ever seen one; the unexpected shock of two fingers sinking themselves deep wrung a shocked yelp from her throat and a buck from her hips that went nowhere under Sonja’s firm, gentle hand.

Aqua eyes so dark they were nearly the color of the sea shone under coppery lashes as Sonja laughed in delight, the flutter of that tongue against her clit coiling the spring tighter as Shannon found herself abruptly at the edge of an orgasm that had been lost in the wildfires.

“No more,” Shannon begged at last, when she could find the breath, as she tugged ineffectually on Sonja’s arm. “Up here, Soni, please, I need to kiss you, I…”

The next words were lost in Sonja’s mouth on hers and Shannon moaned, all restraint gone, as she tasted herself and ground her wet, open core shamelessly against Sonja’s hip. One slim hand slipped between them to work her open again, to tease and dance until she was sobbing, but in the end it was a kiss that sent her over.

Gently, as if she could hardly believe her good fortune, Sonja kissed the tears from the corner of her eyes, the flutter of her lips barely noticeable.

It was more than enough.

With a choked sob she let herself go, her hand covering Sonja’s to press those clever, _brilliant_ fingers deeper inside her, and felt the pleasure/pain/ecstasy of release as she rippled around those fingers and lost herself in starfire.


End file.
